West Virginia State University Tuesday revealed that an administrator who worked at the now-defunct Mountain State University for a dozen years is WVSU's third and, likely, last presidential finalist.
WVSU's Board of Governors plans to vote on hiring a president at a noon meeting Thursday in the Grand Hall of the Erickson Alumni Center on the school's Institute campus.
Roslyn Clark-Artis, a WVSU graduate and current president of Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens, Florida, will visit WVSU for an open forum from 10:45 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday in the Dr. Ann Brothers Smith Conference Room in the Judge Damon J. Keith Scholars Hall.
MSU, a private college, ended up selling its Beckley campus last year to West Virginia University for $8 million to help settle a class-action lawsuit in which hundreds of former students sued the university for not providing them a worthy education.
According to a 2009 voice recording, Clark-Artis told MSU students in a meeting that, "I'm not scared of your lawsuit, bring it on. If we're liable, we'll end up paying and if we're not, then we won't. Bring it."
MSU closed in 2012 after the Higher Learning Commission, in an unprecedented move in West Virgina, pulled its accreditation. The Wall Street Journal reported that, since 2000, college accreditors like the HLC have rescinded the membership of MSU and only 25 other education institutions across the nation.
According to her resume, Clark-Artis was an adjunct legal professor at MSU's predecessor, The College of West Virginia, and an attorney before she joined MSU as director of its legal studies department in 2001. In 2003, she became senior academic officer for distance education and, in 2006, she became vice president for university advancement and president of the MSU Foundation.
She became executive vice president of academic affairs and chief academic officer in 2009 and provost in 2012. In those final two MSU positions, her resume states she took part in developing MSU's first doctorate degree program and its comprehensive strategic plan and authored the teach out plan for students that led to what her resume calls "the merger with University of Charleston" and now WVU.
UC initially leased MSU's former Beckley campus and for a time was helping former MSU students finish their studies to earn UC degrees.
Clark-Artis' current school, which she's led since 2013, is a private, nonprofit, Baptist-affiliated historically black institution. WVSU also is an HBCU.
Florida Memorial University had about 1,500 students enrolled last school year, according to the U.S. Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics.
Her resume says that in her first year at her current school, she overcame a "significant budget deficit" to end that fiscal year with a surplus and has maintained surpluses. She also said she launched the school's first online courses, updated its technology infrastructure, revamped its website and social media presence, surpassed fundraising goals and built two new facilities.
WVSU hasn't been revealing finalists until, officials say, the candidates agree to visit campus. It's hosted these roughly 45-minute forums for each of the three finalists Monday, Tuesday and now Wednesday. For the forums Tuesday and Wednesday, the finalist's name was only released a day in advance, and the finalist at Monday's forum was revealed Friday.
About 25 people, several of them WVSU officials, showed up to Tuesday's forum to hear finalist Anthony Jenkins, senior associate vice president for student development and enrollment services at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Unlike the first finalist - Barbara Lyman, provost and executive vice president at Pennsylvania's Shippensburg University - Jenkins spent only a few minutes speaking about his background, quickly stating he's a first-generation college student raised by a single mother who earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at historically black universities and has worked in various states at varied institutions, including HBCUs, predominantly white, Hispanic-serving, rural, urban, small and large schools.
He left his lectern and walked up the aisle between the audience taking questions, telling one questioner he wants to prioritize improving enrollment and retention. He also said he'd like to build more dormitories on campus and use events to connect commuter students to the school.
A WVSU census in the fall found that 9 percent of its students are black, 7 percent are multiracial, 46 percent are white and 36 percent are of an unknown race.
Chloe Ivy, a December WVSU graduate, told Jenkins she didn't get the HBCU experience she wanted - she told the Gazette-Mail that was partly because there weren't enough students of different races.
Jenkins, who is African American, said WVSU's location limits black student recruitment, but he said the school may be able to better attract African Americans. He said the university needs to have a "broad conversation" in which the university community defines what WVSU's particular HBCU experience should be.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.